KEVIN NORBURY reports on a trip from Bundy country for Wild Turkey's funereal transport.

1959 Tank Fairlane

KEVIN NORBURY reports on a trip from Bundy country for Wild Turkey's funereal transport.

1959 Tank Fairlane

07 Oct 2016Kevin Norbury

The hearse that rocks

From rolling in the bodies to rolling out the gear to make the sounds of rockabilly. Something sombre to something else again. But that's the lot of Johnny Marsden's "Tank" Fairlane - and he loves all six metres of it.

While Marsden's home in the Dandenong hills at Kilsyth is not easy to find, you know when you get there. Tank Fairlanes by the yard full but prime position goes to a dark green 1959 model, a former Queensland hearse he uses for his band, Wild Turkey.

"It's such a unique body style," he says, admiring the old hearse. "A friend of mine reckons he saw it in the 1960s in Sydney. It had some sort of funeral parlour sign on the roof when it was getting around." Marsden points out the screw holes. The stainless steel flower rails are still there, as well as the stainless steel coffin rails and platform inside, and the rollers.

This was no ordinary hearse, says Marsden. The body was custom made by W. G. Smith in Lidcombe, NSW. "Every body he's made is quite spectacular," he says, pointing out his hearse's sweeping lines. "Everything in this is all quality. When it was made it was probably the most expensive hearse you could buy."

Marsden can't say if the hearse has ever taken any famous Australians to their final destination but it does have an interesting history. He believes it was first used in Sydney; he found the original handbook. "In it was scribbled a pick-up address (of the dearly departed) and the name of a private hospital in Cumberland Road, Auburn."

It then went to southern Queensland, where it was used by funeral director Robert Buchan at St George. The locals didn't like the station wagon he had and when he saw the Tank Fairlane beside the Hume, south of Sydney, he grabbed it. Buchan says it was delivered by a couple of jokers who had a bit of fun on the way. One drove while the other one lay down in the back and sat up whenever a car passed, frightening the hell out the occupants.

Buchan kept the hearse for eight years. Marsden bought it in 1993 from another muso at Templestowe, who warned him he might find it hard to replace the back window if he ever broke it because of its peculiar shape. Marsden took one look at it and told him: "I've got one of those under the house . . . It's the back window out of a 1960 Ford Falcon." Marsden knows his Fords.

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He even still has "dad's old car"; he taps the roof of a 1960 Chevrolet in the yard. "And dad's old green grocery truck," he says, pointing to a 1947 Chev truck-type utility his late father used in his greengrocery round in Melbourne's northern suburbs. "That was his last truck . . . I keep it registered for sentimental reasons. I might restore it one day. It looks pretty rough but it does run."

Marsden says the family always had old cars and remembers he and his brother "hassling" their father to get a V8. His father loved Chevs but his brother got into Fords "as some teenage rebellion thing" and Marsden followed. He says he bought his first car, an XP Falcon ute, when he was 16. He's still got it and just about every other car he's owned. By the time he was 18 he had eight cars. Now at 33 he has "34 at last count, predominantly Fords, a few Chevs and one Holden". "But it can be a bit stressful," he admits. "I've got cars stored all over the place".

He puts his collection of old cars down to his father's influence. "Dad lived through the (1930s) Depression and they tended not to throw things out. They'd fix them. That's contributed to my current situation," he says.

He formed his rockabilly band when still at school and carted all his musical gear around in the XP Falcon ute. But he wanted something "more classy", he says, and decided on the hearse. "Since I was a kid, I've wanted one," he says, although he's not sure why. "They're unique, really. Each one is generally coach built so there's no two alike."

His ideal was a Tank Fairlane and he saw the 1959 hearse advertised in 1993. It took him a year to get it on the road but since, he says, other Tank Fairlanes have found him. He now has six, four of them hearses.

Only the green one is a goer. It had its sliding plate-glass dividers between the cabin and its cargo when he bought it. "But they got smashed in an accident when someone ran into the front corner of it. All the music gear moved, smashing the dividers and showering me with plate glass."

But the old hearse is made of tough stuff. The other car was a write-off. Marsden had the hearse repaired. Apart from that he hasn't done much to it. He replaced its 332 cubic inch V8 with an FE series big block 390 cubic inch V8 out of a 1965 Ford Galaxy that he did up with a mate's help. "It's been bored out a bit," he says, conceding he probably owns the only hotted-up hearse around.

His only outward sign of embellishment are little stainless steel crosses on the front mudguards, replacing broken gunsight ornaments. He occasionally wears a battered black leather top hat like undertakers once wore. "That's a bit of symbolism," he says.

But he baulks at suggestions of putting a coffin in the back, although he's had one in there for a TV show. "I don't feel like driving around with a coffin in the back," he says. "That's too much symbolism for me."

Autobiography

The "Tank" Fairlane hearse featured here rolled off the production line at Ford's Broadmeadows plant as a running chassis in 1959. The was body built by W. G. Smith, of Lidcombe, NSW, in 1960, and it was used initially in Sydney. Later movements are sketchy but nonetheless interesting. Former funeral director Robert Buchan said he used it in community funeral services at St George, Queensland, for eight years, then sold it to Kevin McGrath, of Toowoomba in 1987.

Barry Walters, manager of Warwick Funerals, once owned by McGrath, thought the hearse came from Dirranbandi, where it was owned by earth-moving contractor brothers who were also the local funeral directors. One manager reportedly refused to drive it because it was blowing too much smoke and it was sold to a local painter.

In 1989 it was used briefly by Chris Cutler for his band Dynasty; he brought it to Melbourne. Johnny Marsden bought it from Cutler in December 1993, overhauled it and had it re-registered in Victoria in 1994.